Building Pre-Execution Gates: Three Architectural Patterns

Short summary

Pre-execution gates control access through three patterns: decision tables (rules hardcoded in code, simple but inflexible), policy languages (YAML-based, runtime-configurable for operators), and state machines (stateful workflows). Choose based on rule stability and change frequency—decision tables for small stable rulesets, policy languages when non-developers need to modify rules without redeployment.

• •Decision table pattern walks through hardcoded rules in order; fast and transparent but requires code redeploy to change rules
• •Policy language pattern loads policies from YAML at startup, allowing runtime changes without touching code
• •State machine pattern (details in full article) handles complex conditional flows

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